Existentialism: Old Scars
by chromodynamic
Summary: One of two simultaneous and parallel sequels to Existentialism. One year after the events of Existentialism, John is still trying to find a way of rescuing Miku - and, at long last, he finally finds one.
1. Chapter 1: Night Terror

It was as if I couldn't run fast enough. I knew I could run faster, but at the same time I just couldn't. It was as if the air around my legs had grown thick and heavy - but I couldn't stop running. I could hear her footsteps behind me, steady, exact, unrelenting. If she caught up with me, she was going to kill me. Carbon fibre skin and dead coral-pink eyes… and the barrel of a gun.

My legs felt so tired, and my right arm felt as if it were about to drop off, but I couldn't ever stop. The stairs - did they go on forever? I had been running for so long. My heart was thumping in my chest so loudly. Was that blood leaking from my shoulder? The arm hung limply at my side. I wasn't sure what had happened to it. All I could remember was running.

"Citizen, please remain still," The voice was a jarring monotone that echoed around me like a swarm of flies. It made my lower right leg ache, though I had no idea why. "Citizen. Citizen."

"Fuck off." I grunted through clenched teeth as I forced myself further up the stairs. Something about the situation felt disgustingly familiar.

"Citizen. Citizen." The voice buzzed about my head, like a drill at either temple, punctuated by the steady clack-clack-clack of her footsteps and the rapid thumping of my heart.

Somebody called my name from the top of the stairwell. Was that…? No, it couldn't've been. She was long gone; any chance I would ever see her again having long since faded into nothingness. What was I fighting for, again?

I looked over my shoulder, and SF-A2 was right there. "You are an obstacle." She droned. The barrel of the autocannon lifted to fire.

The weight on my legs had seemingly vanished as I scrabbled for dear life up the stairs. To stop was to die, and I wasn't planning on dying. My arm flapped uselessly at my side. I couldn't even feel it - it were almost as if the arm had died but by some miracle was still attached.

The buzzing, echoing voice followed me. She couldn't've been close. It was impossible. She was moving far too slow to be able to keep up with me - but every time I glanced over my shoulder, she was coming around the bend I'd just past. No matter how fast or how far I ran, she was always there.

I gulped, and kept running.

"John," The mention of my name - my _real_ name - from that _thing_ sent slivers of ice lancing into my chest. "Stop running."

"Fuck off!" I screamed, feeling blood dripping from my palate. Why was that happening? I came around another bend in the stairwell, and there was a door. I scrabbled at the handle with the one hand that worked, glancing accusingly at the one that was hanging limp - only to find that my sleeve was empty. The arm had simply vanished without a trace. Had it ever been there in the first place? I couldn't remember.

I shouldered my way through the door and onto the roof of the building. The sky was perfect pitch black, as if every star in the universe had simply winked out of existence. The only light was that of the moon, and of the buildings around us. The right leg was throbbing painfully below the knee. I glanced about, but there was nowhere to go but the edge. I heard the door slam open again behind me, and I turned to face my pursuer.

She stalked toward me, slowly, purposefully. Before I knew it, I had backed toward the edge of the building, and finally she stopped. The autocannon levelled. Her eyes were so hauntingly dead. "Yamaha apologizes for any stress, inconvenience, or damage of property," She droned as a round clicked into the chamber. This was it. End of the line. "If you feel your rights have not been upheld, please go to Hell."

The autocannon fired, my lower right leg exploded, and I toppled from the building.

As I fell, I could see her, watching me. There was no trace of satisfaction or anger or even acknowledgement on her face. There was nothing. It would've felt a little better if there had been even an ounce of any emotion on her porcelain face.

I seemed to have become blind in my left eye. I didn't know when it happened. It simply occurred to me, while I was falling, that I had been half-blinded.

I didn't feel scared anymore as the momentum flipped me over mid-air. The ground wasn't far away. It'd be over in a few short seconds. There was somebody down there with long blue hair. It was reassuring for some reason. She looked up.

"Miku!" I screamed just before I hit the ground.

That was when I woke up.


	2. Chapter 2: Twenty Five Thousand and One

I pinched the bridge of my nose drowsily with the one arm that was still attached. These nightmares. These damn nightmares. I was sure that they would be the end of me. I had nothing to fear from them - they were, after all, nothing more than dreams - but they still frightened me to no end. I supposed, however, that was merely the nature of dreams themselves. Carbon fibre skin and dead coral pink eyes… and the barrel of a gun. It still haunted me, as if it had happened merely days ago rather than an entire year.

It made my foot feel itchy for some reason, but as I went to scratch it I remembered that foot no longer existed as part of my body. Lifting off the covers, I stared at the stump that was the remnants of my right leg. Sometimes I could still feel it, but that was little more than phantom pain. Old woes coming back to haunt me - just like the nightmares.

I shook the tiredness from my numbed head as best I could. There was no point in trying to go back to sleep now. I'd never manage it, not with the threat of nightmares constantly looming over me like a thundercloud.

I swept myself into a sitting position with my one leg dangling off of the side of my bed, reaching over to the bedside cabinet for my prosthetic. For a few moments after it was attached, I stared at my arms. The flesh-and-blood arm had thickened out somewhat over recent months. I had been going through some strength training, and for good reason.

I cast a similar glance toward my other arm, and I was met with a completely different sight. In comparison to the musculature of the other arm, my prosthetic seemed almost slender. It was more elegant than my last prosthetic - instead of my gaze meeting with a forest of steel fibres it was instead met with plastic-ceramic and aluminium, all light-grey and cleaned to a dull, unflashy finish, with the fibres and pistons only visible at the joints. I rolled the shoulder, watching internal pistons slide through the bundles of coiled steel. The two arms were contrasting to be sure, and with my current fitness regime it was easy to believe that my flesh-and-blood arm was actually stronger than my mechanical one. Sure, it was much less durable, but still.

With a yawn, I twisted the lower half of my right leg into it's socket. Servomotors whirred and clicked. Everything was fine, it seemed. I snorted. No, nothing was fine. Not in this world. Not now. I brought my hand up to my ear, ignoring the snarl of static that bounced about my skull as my implant was activated.

This world wasn't fine at all, I mused, sitting there with the moonlight streaming through the crack in the curtains. I stared at the almost bird-like claw that was my right foot. Had it really been a year since I'd lost it? The fight was still so fresh in my memory… I could practically hear the autocannon firing. That damn android…

Androids. Machines designed to mimic human life for a particular purpose. I'd gained a great deal of mistrust and fear toward them, for perfectly rational reasons, I'll have you know. I'd never overly liked the concept of robots wearing human skins, and after that incident with SF-A2 it really didn't bare thinking about. The damage, both physical and psychological, had been done. The scars ran deeper than you could see.

It was perhaps ironic, then, that the girl who I considered to be my daughter was actually one of them. I sighed deeply as I finally stood to get dressed. In particular, the image that sprung to mind was of the last time I saw her. Well, the last time I saw the _real_ her, not any of the cheap mass-produced knock-offs being flung around.

What had truly shocked me about the release of the Vocaloid hardware models was how many of them there actually was. There were over seventy models, each with at least five thousand units and at most twenty five thousand. There were around eight hundred thousand total Vocaloids out there in the world. It really was a shocking number. Eight hundred thousand human analogues for sale - it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end just thinking about it. Yamaha were selling sentient beings. People.

The other thing that had shocked me was that nobody had objected. Not one single soul on this damn planet had thought about the situation and said 'Hold on a minute, are we buying slaves?' I mean, honestly. These Vocaloids were little more than slaves. And they weren't slaves by choice, either. As long as you were their registered owner (as it turned out, they refer to their owner as 'Master' by default. Creepy, no?) they would do almost anything you asked them (apart from actually hurting somebody because that goes against the laws of robotics), no matter how stupid, ridiculous or in fact lewd it may be. They had enough artificial intelligence to have personalities and emotions and dreams... and yet they were all still bound by a core code - Serve your Master. The thought of it sickened me to my core. Maybe some 'Masters' treated their Vocaloid well, but for every innocent soul there was a twisted one.

When I actually thought about it, perhaps somebody _had_ objected after all. Perhaps some people _had_ spoken up, and just as Yamaha had done with me, they'd hushed it all up. It was a distinct possibility. It set my hackles off. Today wasn't going to be a good day. I could feel it in my gut.

* * *

It was a cold, cold morning. I pulled my jacket tighter around me, no particular goal in mind for this stroll. There was no rhyme or reason to it, I just felt like walking. I thought it would help me overcome the snakes in my stomach, snakes that were squirming and writhing. Simply put, I felt like I was due to throw up.

The seams of my prosthetics were uncomfortably cold on my skin, though that couldn't be helped, laws of thermodynamics and all that. The near-frozen puddles sloshed and splashed underfoot. I had always hated that noise. It sounded disgusting. It made me want to throw up even more. Why was the world urging me to void my stomach all of a sudden?

It wasn't raining or anything, but with the blanket of cloud looming overhead I wasn't taking any chances, so my hood was firmly fixed over the top of my head. A little protection could go a long way in this harsh world, euphemism unintended.

A discarded piece of litter fluttered past me in the wind. People were so careless these days, uncaring of anything happening outside of their little pathetic bubbles. Why could nobody ever seem to see the bigger picture?

And just like that, I slipped and landed flat on my back, smacking my head on the concrete. People were so careless. I was, in the end, just another one of the people. I began grumbling disconcordantly as I sat up, rubbing the back of my head. I was John Moody after all. I couldn't change that if I tried. A hand - somebody else's, obviously - found it's way onto my shoulder, and a curiously familiar voice asked me, "Are you okay?"

As I opened my eyes, I concluded that the world was attempting to rub as much salt into my wounds as physically possible. I felt a fire flare up in my gut when I saw her face - a fire which was extinguished somewhat when I saw her worried expression. Kneeling next to me, dressed in winter clothes, was Miku. Not the Miku I knew, of course, but… It was 'a' Miku. "I'm fine," I grunted, clambering to my feet. I found myself reading her expression. "I just slipped."

The Miku regarded me for a moment before somebody, evidently her 'master' (the term still raised my hackles), called her name. "I'm coming!" She shouted over her shoulder before returning her attention to me. "Okay, just… be more careful. Please." With that, she took off in pursuit of whoever it was she was with, smiling all the way.

I found a deep sigh leaving me as I watched her leave. Well, at least that Miku seemed happy. One down… twenty four thousand, nine hundred and ninety nine to go. And even then, there was one more I had to find. I pulled my hood back over my head, and slipped into the dusky light once more.


	3. Chapter 3: A Brief Encounter

The briefcase was heavier than it looked, though that was due to the contents being slightly, if not entirely illegal. The weight of it was dragging down my mind. What if I got caught with this? I didn't even know if _this_ was what I had requested in the first place. For all I knew, there was just some scrap metal inside this case. I couldn't exactly open it up to look; not out in the open. I gulped down my fear and kept walking. People passed without so much as a second glance, entirely unaware of the deadly weapon I was hiding. Granted, I looked somewhat ominous, with the trench coat and briefcase, so they probably thought it best to not bother me.

Chink. Chink. Chink. It was impossible to forget about the prosthetic foot. Not only did it catch the reflection of the street lights in my peripheral vision, but the noise accompanied me everywhere. Maybe opting for prosthetics instead of biological replacements wasn't such a good idea after all? I flexed my metallic hand awkwardly. No, this was just easier. Perhaps I could get a foot that actually fit into a boot, though?

I froze on the spot as I saw pink hair in my peripheral vision. My blood had turned to ice. Was that SF-A2? I tried to gulp my fear down again, but it caught in my throat. Deciding there was no use in delaying it, I quickly looked over my shoulder.

It was the wrong shade of pink, and the person was too tall and their body was the wrong shape - but she was a Vocaloid. Of that, I had no doubt. I had seen that particular model several times before, and each time she had given me the same trouble. I let out a breath I didn't realise I had been holding, and resumed walking. Well, that was the Vocaloid-of-the-day over and done with. I didn't exactly spot them very often.

My blood was up, and wouldn't come down, like fire gushing through my veins. A police car turned the corner ahead, sirens blazing. For a moment fear clutched at my chest as I thought it was about to stop, but the car simply blazed past. A phantom itch was creeping across my prosthetic arm, a prickling feeling like there was a spider crawling over the skin that wasn't there. I gulped again.

The seconds dragged themselves by as I walked. It was like some sort of waking nightmare. Every shadow seemed like a threat. I sighed, glancing down at my watch. Nine o'clock.

When I looked up, my blood froze. This time there was no mistaking it. Everything was just as I remembered it. SF-A2, dead ahead. If I stopped or ran away, that would be suspicious. All I could hope to do was keep walking and hope I wasn't recognised. I didn't want to lose another limb. I tilted my head down and hunched my shoulders up, for what good it would do me. If this was indeed _another_ SF-A2 sent to kill me, then I didn't exactly have much of a chance. I would have no time to retrieve the contents of the briefcase before I was turned into swiss-cheese by whatever weapon she was carrying.

There was somebody walking with her, too. Another weaponised Vocaloid, perhaps? Only time would tell. My heart was thumping loudly in my ears, sweat beading on my forehead despite the cold. My body tensed and I prepared for the worst.

As they passed, I saw that SF-A2 was smiling. I couldn't tell whether that reassured me or made me feel even more uncomfortable. I paused and glanced over my shoulder. SF-A2 laughed at something the other person said. Not weaponised after all. Perhaps that one SF-A2 was an exception? I hoped that was the case. I didn't want to have to fight any more armed robot vocaloid things. My grip tightened on the briefcase, and I resumed walking.

My blood was up, and it wouldn't come back down.

* * *

Luckily, it seemed that the workshop was empty. As I placed the briefcase on a workbench, I glanced around just to make sure I was alone. It seemed I was - nobody had decided to stay for overtime or anything like that. I pressed my thumb into the case's analyser, and heard the click of the lock unhooking.

With one last fearful glance about, I opened the briefcase. The sense of fearful anticipation faded. The contents of the briefcase were exactly what I'd requested. It hadn't been easy to get a hold of the supplier, and to have gone through all that effort for them to supply me with the wrong weapon would've been frustrating to say the least.

An HK416 assault rifle, capable of both semi-automatic and fully-automatic firing modes, complete with a vertical foregrip and ironsights. If I was ever going to go up against another SF-A2, I would be ready for them. There would be no more losing limbs for me. Thirty rounds of 5.56×45mm would surely be enough to put any weaponised Vocaloid down for the count. I gulped, unsure if that was the truth. Well, as long as I aimed for the chest and head, I would probably be fine… right?

"What've you got there, Will?" I slammed the briefcase shut, hoping my visitor hadn't seen the contents. I had been so sure that I was alone. Evidently I had not looked hard enough. It took me a moment to realise that he had said my name and not somebody else's.

"I didn't see you there Huey. You startled me." I took a deep breath to try and steady my heartbeat. William. That was my name now. William Bennet. Officially, John Moody no longer existed.

Huey took a few steps closer, his eyes narrowed with curiosity. "So? What's in the briefcase?"

I clenched my fist, hearing the scraping of metal on metal. "Nothing important. Just personal stuff."

He was looking more and more suspicious with every word. "Why did you take your personal stuff here?"

Shit. He was right, of course. Why the hell would I take my personal stuff into my place of work? I wouldn't. I would take it home, obviously. It was personal stuff and that's where personal stuff belonged. "Just… It's nothing, okay."

"I dunno," Huey droned, leaning on one of the many supporting concrete pillars of the workshop. "Seems pretty suspicious to me." He was doing this on purpose. I could just feel the shit-eating grin lurking behind that flat expression of his. It made me want to punch him. "If I didn't know any better, I'd think that -" There was an odd sort of whistle, and Huey broke off abruptly and brought his hand up to the side of his neck. "Ow, what the…?"

From the skin of his neck he pulled a small dart with an empty chamber on the back. The faux-suspicion on his face turned to confusion. "What the hell is th…" His eyelids flicked and his sentence trailed off and died, and he very suddenly dropped to the floor.

Before I could properly comprehend what had just happened, I found another dart had found its mark in my own neck. I pulled it out as quickly as I possibly could, but as I looked the chamber was empty. Whatever sort of cocktail had been in that dart was now in me. "This is bullshit." I said to myself before I blacked out.


End file.
